Shocking report on obesity stuns scientists

The obesity epidemic just took an alarming new turn.

A stunning new report on obesity might change just how you perceive the health epidemic.

If you’re not obese, you’re going to become the minority at the rate things are going, says a new study that analyzes data from 186 countries, according to a Lancet statement.

The percentage of obese men have jumped by an absolutely massive amount between 1975 and 2014 — from 3.2 percent to 10.8 percent, and for women it increased from 6.4 percent to 14.9 percent.

Naturally, that meant negative things for the rate of underweight people, which fell from 13.8 percent to 8.8 percent for men, and 14.6 percent to 9.7 percent for women.

And things are only going to get worse based on current trends, the study says, predicting that 18 percent of men and 21 percent of women will be obese by 2025, and a whopping 6 percent of men and 9 percent of women will be very obese. That means that in just 10 years, there will be more severely obese people than underweight people worldwide.

South Asia had the highest underweight numbers at 23.4 percent for men and 24 percent for women.

“Over the past 40 years, we have changed from a world in which underweight prevalence was more than double that of obesity, to one in which more people are obese than underweight,” senior author Professor Majid Ezzati from the School of Public Health at Imperial College London, London, UK, said in the statement. “If present trends continue, not only will the world not meet the obesity target of halting the rise in the prevalence of obesity at its 2010 level by 2025, but more women will be severely obese than underweight by 2025.”

He added: “To avoid an epidemic of severe obesity, new policies that can slow down and stop the worldwide increase in body weight must be implemented quickly and rigorously evaluated, including smart food policies and improved health-care training.”